Saturday, 21 May 2016

I was two years old when I played my first video game. It was Spyro the Dragon on the original PlayStation after watching my dad play it for the entirety of the time I was a toddler. I spent the next year playing games my dad owned on the PlayStation 2, and by the time I was four years old I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to make a game. I didn't know how you'd do this, that they were made by teams of people, and that I wasn't very good at the skills you need to create one. I just knew that I wanted to make a game that was fun.

When I was ten years old, I found out about Minecraft. I found out that Minecraft was made by one guy. I found out you could make a game by yourself. I was painfully optimistic that one day, I'd be making my own games. I started learning how you'd do this, and I began to learn Java a year later. I took my time with it: "I have all the time in the world", I'd told myself. I wasn't learning very much; I'd been spending time with friends - visiting their houses every night, going out to the shopping centre with them, and I was totally invested in this one friend who took up all the other time I had. I eventually forgot everything I'd learned about Java, and refused to pick it back up.

I stopped going to my friend's houses every night, I stopped going to the shopping centre with them, and I cut off contact with the friend I'd been invested in because we were both toxic to eachother. I found new friends, and only a few of them went outside after school - there were three of them, and they didn't ever invite anybody else. I wasn't one of them. I had all the free time in the world at this point. I kept putting off learning a tool of the trade I wanted to go in to. I wanted to wait until I got to choose GCSE computer science - which ended up not happening, much to my devastation. Over the next six weeks, I had the perfect opportunity to go learn a tool of the trade, and I didn't - I kept postponing it, and I did it the next summer too. I don't regret it, because it lead onto the events of the next paragraph.

In February of this year, I met somebody who made me feel like I had the ambition and drive to do anything - something I haven't felt since all those years ago, before I started hanging out with my then-friends (most of which are now my friends again because they befriended my 'new' ones). The only reason why I started doing revision is because this person did it a lot and I wanted to fill up my time not talking to them with something. I did a minimal amount throughout March, and picked it up more in April. I was bursting with energy for what is probably the first time in years. I was high on life. "I'm going to go set out to do what I've wanted to do for the past twelve years, when my GCSEs are over", I was telling myself. They made me realise I hate the United Kingdom and wanted to move, and they made me know exactly where.

Then, on the 23rd of last month, they hit me with this bombshell: 'I don't want to talk any more'. They went into the reasons why they didn't want to any more, and I can perfectly understand them, but I went into a slump. I lost my focus. I stopped revising, I stopped doing anything except browsing Reddit after school. They were, at that point, my best friend and the only person I could say with finality actually liked me. And now they were gone - just like my drive to do well in my exams, to revise, the energy I had after school and the laughs I'd had on the bus home messaging them.

I have felt like this for this past month now. My sixteenth was considerably less enjoyable than any birthday I've had previously. During my exams I still have that drive to do well, but my thoughts are interrupted by "how can I get that person back?". Over the past week, there's been a sign there might be light at the end of the tunnel for that question, but it's nothing considerable and I have no idea how I can act on getting them back at the moment. It's not a thing my exams can work me towards, either. I realised today, I need a new reason to do well. I opened up some old documents I made in November 2015, and I read through them. There's some neat ideas I put in them. Probably a little ambitious for someone who has yet to have his game maker cherry popped, but I'm going to try anyway.

When I finish school, my GCSEs don't matter to me any more. I've done my best I can at this moment in time in them: what I get in August is what I get. When I finish Secondary School, I get to put my full time into repairing my bridge with that person I talked about earlier (hopefully), and when they're not around because they'll still be in school for a month after me, I get to put my spare time into this:

Monday, 16 May 2016

I woke up this morning and got dressed, brushed my teeth, put my jacket on, and got my bag ready. I collected my pens off the side of my dresser and put them in my pockets. "I'm so ready for these exams", I had thought to myself, still euphoric and adrenaline-pumped from the events that had occurred last night. How wrong of me.

It turns out, no, I wasn't ready for these exams. I walked into the exam hall, unsure of where I was actually supposed to be sitting: the board outside of the exam hall hadn't been updated yet and I'd forgotten my exam timetable somewhere. Luckily, they'd put a name tag on the desk with my face, name, and candidate number on it. I sat down, put my water bottle on the floor, slid my glasses onto my face, and got my black pen out. 'I'm so ready', I'd told myself. "Start", the invidulator said a few short minutes later.

And before I knew it, he was telling the normal time students they could leave. I'd been scribbling away at my page for two hours now - surely, I'm almost done? I never use my extra time, I complete the papers under the two hours I need and I get Bs in this subject. I checked the thickness of the pages left. Thank God, it didn't feel like too much. I was halfway through the last question when he said "one minute left", I noticed a face shining through the other side of the paper - I turned the page, and my heart sank into my stomach. There was an entire unit left to do. "Time's up", he said calmly to the three of us left in there. He swaggered over to my table and picked up my paper while I was thinking 'what the hell have I just done for these two and a half hours?'. "Did it go okay?", he asked me. I looked up and picked my water bottle up, and proceeded to rise to my feet. "Yeah", I choked, and walked away to go put my jacket on and collect my bag. I walked out of the exam hall with my overconfidence I'd walked in there with completely and totally shattered.

I went to third period like I'd usually do on a Monday. I noticed somebody in my leisure and tourism class wasn't there. I asked where he was - 'oh, he's resitting an exam'. I thought I heard that, at least. My suspicions that the next exam was at 11:30AM and not 1:30PM like I first thought were quashed. When I actually went to the exam hall at that time, nobody was there. Both exam halls were totally empty. 'Maybe it's next lesson, then?', I thought. Long story cut short, it wasn't. It had been an hour earlier, and the person who said 'he's resitting an exam' had actually said 'he's sitting an exam'. An exam I was supposed to be there for.

I was gobsmacked. I walked into next lesson, unsure of what to do. Do I tell my Chemistry teacher I have that lesson, who is also my head of year? I decided on not doing it. I let somebody else in my class walk in before me. "How did your BTEC go?", the head of year asked to him. My heart sank deeper than it already had this morning. I'd missed an exam. And now, I have no idea what to do. Do I bring this up to anyone besides my parents - who are stunned that I've managed to do this, or do I save my self-respect and open my exam results envelope in August and keep the little 'N/A' on that exam result private? These are the questions that have messed my whole day up.

Friday, 13 May 2016

Hey there. I'm EvilStudMuffin, and this is my blog thing. I was going to use Wordpress but my FTP stopped working and I gave up. I do have a Tumblr, but that site has a pretty cancerous user base so I'd prefer to stray away from that crowd, and besides, I think it's a pretty ugly website. That's how I ended up using Blogger - limited in themes, design options, and looks pretty ugly, but at least it's easy enough for hipster stupids like me to navigate, right?

So I guess this is the bit where I tell you stuff about myself. I'm sixteen years old, I'm from England (with mixed West European ancestry, yay), and I'm a pretty big fan of (pirate) booty. What I do in my spare time is wasting my life playing video games, listen to music and doing random stuff on the internet (I'm not sure watching YouTube videos and browsing Reddit posts is 'random stuff', but whatever). I figured I'd use some time of that time semi-productively and write stuff down - I have a lot to say, and usually have nowhere to say it. For example, I could go make a multi-paragraph post on how much of an actual spaz I am. I'm sure that's completely interesting for people and will make me a complete internet legend.

I got the idea of making a blog type thingy in around February this year to document my totally cool revision habits and then post about how good I did in my exams months later. Stuff came up, and I didn't start revision until April (good job me, leaving it until a month before your exams!). More stuff has come up over the last few weeks and I've done what is probably a minimal amount compared to everybody else I know due to an extreme lack of motivation to do anything at all. My stress levels have come to a boiling point now, and I just need a place to write my thoughts down. I guess this'll be, for now, a blog about how hard I failed my GCSEs, or winged and magically succeeded in them. I guess I'll find out in August. For now, I actually have to do them over the next month. Posts could get interesting if I don't abandon this in two weeks.

I guess it'll be fun to see one dude's misguided journey through life that, as of yet, doesn't have a very clear destination. In fact, I'll be surprised if I actually find that destination before I die. When I trip and fall out of my parent's loft (being a squatter could be fun) in ten year's time because I left a lego brick lying around in it, I'll have a sudden epiphany of where I want to go in life. Then it'll be too late because I'll fatally injure myself on the way down (I don't care if the drop is around seven foot, I'm a lanky... thing).

I guess I'll see whoever wants to waste their time reading my stuff around, then?